Short Story: Main Character Energy

I’m gearing up to publish my next book, and currently writing another, so main characters are on my mind. This short story, “Main Character Energy,” was a lot of fun to write, because so often the characters will scrap everything I’m doing and take over the story. This was also included in the Redwood Writers anthology, One Universe to the Left, which published last year.

Enjoy!

Main Character Energy

The sun is setting on the golden horizon, ending another August night in the heart of Beachcomber Cove. We stand on the edge of a cliff, the same cliff we’d met on five weeks ago when we were set up on a blind date. I’d thought it was a strange place for a first meeting back then. But now, I find it comforting, romantic even. Especially with the way the waves are crashing against the rocks below, like my heart is crashing against my chest. 

The breeze flirts with my hair, soft tendrils tickling my face. I start to lift my hand, but he’s there first. Always ready to take care of my needs without me having to say a word. His hand goes for my hair as his gaze lowers, then rests on my lips. 

“You look like someone waiting to be kissed,” he purrs. He pulls me in closer, his arms wrapping tightly around me, his breathing intensifying as he lowers his mouth to —”

“STOP.” 

I tear myself away from Lorenzo, who stumbles backward. 

“Violet, what the heck?” He tries to get his footing, but never quite makes it, and I brace myself as he teeters toward the cliff.

“Lorenzo!”

But it’s too late. He’s gone over, his feet the last things I see as he disappears over the edge. I suck in a sympathetic breath, glancing at the spot where he was standing. Then I peer down. His body is contorted unnaturally on the sand below, completely still.

“Oops,” I wince, then turn back to where I was facing, calling out beyond the pages of this romance novel I live in. “Hey. Are you paying attention?”

I wait for Chloe Lambert, the author of this godawful novel, to acknowledge me. But there’s no answer. Instead, a few romantic clichés stream across the skyline. 

“I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.”

“The silence is deafening.”

“Our eyes lock across the room.”

“He is a vision for sore eyes.”

“His kiss becomes the air I breathe.”

“Spare me,” I mutter. Obviously I’m going to have to get her attention before she fills this whole damn novel with dreadfully overused phrases. She already saddled me with that joke of a love interest. 

Think, think, think. 

I see the words appear in the blank sky above me. Big, bold THINK, times three. I realize my thoughts are being transcribed, that I have somehow manifested a shift in power. I start to cheer, but the cursor is blinking and I realize anything I say is going to end up on the page. So I clear my mind and then speak pointedly into the emptiness. 

“Chloe Lambert, Violet Skye needs to talk with you.”

Then I wait, watching the cursor blink a few more times above me. And then…

“Hello?”

I grin. It worked. I finally got through to the author. That’s when I get busy. 

“So, I accidentally offed Lorenzo, but it’s okay because he was absolutely terrible. You really need to watch more romance movies or something, because that guy was one huge red flag, starting with his misogynistic vibes. Oh, and he was kind of a stalker. Did you know he sat outside my work for five days straight, and I hadn’t even told him where I worked yet? Of course you knew. You wrote it. But seriously, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was in a suspense thriller and inches away from being filleted, and not in a romantic beach read. Also, can you please have my next love interest brush his teeth? Or maybe have him lay off the raw onions?”

I force a pause, catching my breath as I watch the typed words on the page catch up with everything I said. Then I wait as the cursor goes back to blinking. I study my nails, realizing they are in desperate need of a polish change. I’m going to have to get Chloe to write that in the story, too. Maybe a whole makeover, while I’m at it, starting with my long, red hair. I read somewhere that only 2% of the world’s population has red hair, and yet romance novels make it seem like this is the norm. I’ve been a redhead in the past five novels, and I’m getting kind of tired of maintaining these lengthy locks. I’m practically Rapunzel when I’d rather be a dramatic brunette with a pixie cut. Maybe she can make me sporty, too. I mean, I’m already slender with a beautifully toned body, despite the fact that my diet consists of huge cheeseburgers and sushi gorge fests, plus multiple cocktails every night. She might as well give me athletic ability to at least make my perfect body a bit more realistic.

“Who is this?”

The cursor blinks after the words, and I pause for a second, wondering if she’s for real. I mean, who else would be talking to her through the computer? 

And then I realize how strange this must be for her, and that she’s probably freaking out right now. 

“This is Violet Skye, your main character. And I may have accidentally deleted your whole story because I’m sitting here in a blank document. But it’s okay because your story suc….”

I pause, wondering how to say the next part without hurting her feelings. 

“I have some ideas on how to improve the story and was hoping you’d let me help you.”

The cursor then blinks a bit longer than it should and I know Chloe Lambert is currently going through a crisis of reality. So I know I need to act quick. I just hope this works. 

“Chloe, type these words: The author Chloe Lambert finds herself inside a romance novel with her laptop.”

I wait, and then, ever so slowly, those same words appear under my own typed text. 

And just like that, she’s here. 

She’s different then I imagined. A little chubby, but pleasantly so. Freckles all over her face. Coffee stains on her gray sweatshirt, and it’s possible she hasn’t washed her hair in a week. The dark circles under her eyes give away her late writing nights, and her pale skin tells me she sees more screen glow than actual sunshine. 

“What the…” She slowly turns around, taking in the nothingness that surrounds us. Then her eyes land on me. “It’s really you,” she breathes. “Violet Skye. You’re real.”

“Well, kind of,” I say. “I mean, I’m as real as your imagination.”

“You’re gorgeous,” she says, her eyes like saucers. I laugh. 

“Well, I’d say thank you, but I can’t take credit. You created me.”

“I suppose I did,” she murmurs. Then she looks around us again. “It’s almost blinding in here. All this white. Is there a way to fix it?”

“Yeah,” I say, pointing at her computer. “You have to write it.”

“Oh.” Chloe glances at the laptop. “Like this?” She sits cross-legged and opens the screen. After a moment of thinking, she starts to type.

The gentle shush of ocean waves fills the salty air in Beachcomber Cove. It’s the kind of day poets write about, with the pleading cries of seagulls floating on wandering winds and a blue sky that stretches beyond the horizon, not a cloud in sight.

The stark whiteness of our surroundings takes on color once again, from the creamy sands that extend for miles and an ocean that seems to go on forever. And Chloe and I are back on the cliff. Thankfully, Lorenzo is not. 

“That’s much better,” I say. “The surroundings, and what you’ve written. I bet this second stab at the novel will go much better.”  

“I don’t know what happened,” she says. “One minute I was writing, and the next, my computer just kind of blipped.” The expression on her face falls as realization takes over. “Oh God, you’re right. I have to rewrite everything. All that work. It’s … gone.”

“Yeah, about that.” She obviously didn’t understand the first time, so I don’t want to tell her again that it’s probably my fault somehow. But she needs to know how bad it was. “It just wasn’t working,” I say. “It’s not like your past works, with the amazing chemistry and super gorgeous scenery. I’ll never forget that one romance that took place in a Paris café. I wanted to live in that one forever.”

She looks at me curiously. “You were there?”

“I’m always there. I’m the main character. This time, I’m Violet Skye, living in beautiful Beachcomber Cove, meeting the man who is supposed to be the love of my life. Except, here’s the thing.” I scrunch my face, then shake my head. “Lorenzo was awful. And, well, I kind of killed him off accidentally.”

“You what?”

“Well, it was an accident, but if I’d been given enough time, I probably would have done it on purpose. You know, that man cut me off every single time I started to talk. Whenever I’d start to say something, he’d get so excited about his own ideas that he’d just run over the top of me and I’d never get to finish what I was saying.”

“He was a conversationalist,” Chloe says. 

“Not a very patient one. Or thoughtful. Like the time I said I wanted ice cream and he thought that was such a good idea, he got a cone for just himself.” I raise an eyebrow in her direction.

“Uh, he knew how much you valued equality, including who paid for the dates.” 

“Well, that’s convenient. I paid for the last date at that steakhouse, and he couldn’t even buy me an ice cream cone.”

“Hold on,” Chloe says, then tilts her head as if trying to find the thought. “What about the time he took you out for an exquisite dinner at that rotating restaurant that overlooked the city, then treated you to a weekend in that fancy hotel suite?”

Admittedly, the restaurant was a major step up from our usual cheap ass dates. And the food was orgasmic. But that was the only orgasm that happened for me that weekend. 

“Lorenzo stared at my tits the whole time —”

“That dress was killer,” Chloe cuts in.

“And he was rude to the waiter when he thought the guy was flirting with me. Then schooled me on etiquette as if he thought I was raised in a barn. But that’s not even the worst. He basically made it clear that a dinner like that meant a happy ending for him.”

Chloe winces. “I was trying to make him more Alpha-like.”

“There’s Alpha, and then there’s Alpha-hole, and Lorenzo was not the good kind.”

“But there was that steamy scene in the shower.”

I shoot her a look. “Have you ever done it in a shower?” I ask. 

She bites her lip, then shakes her head. 

“Let’s just say that it’s less than ideal in the best of circumstances. But in this one, Lorenzo got his, and I finally got to sleep. By the way, kudos on the ritzy hotel room. More of that, please.”

“I just don’t get it,” Chloe says. “If you couldn’t stand him, why were you with him?”

“Are you being serious?” I ask. Her nod confirms it. “Because you wrote it. I don’t get to pick who I want to be with or make my own choices or do anything that isn’t inside your will. What you write is what happens. And in this case, you wrote me a bad romance.”

Chloe runs her hand over the keyboard, as if a story will magically appear. But so far, all we have is this cliff that overlooks gorgeous Beachcombers Cove. 

“So what do I do?” she finally asks. 

I grin. This is the moment I have dreamed of since the beginning. To be fair, Chloe has given me some pretty epic adventures. There was that one time I met this sweet guy at a park who ended up being a very charming prince. Then there was Chloe’s fantasy phase, when I fell in love with the faerie prince who transformed me into a beautiful fae princess. And I’ll never forget that dystopian adventure when she gave me kickass fighting skills and let me save the guy, and then the world. 

But sometimes her storytelling takes a weird turn, especially when it seemed she was trying new things. Like this whole Alpha thing. Don’t get me wrong. The Alpha trope can be hot. It just has to be done right. The guy can be strong, broodish, even an asshole. But he also puts his lady above all things. He might be possessive, but it’s all for her protection. He’ll burn the whole world down, just for her. 

As for Lorenzo, that jackass would have run from a fire and left me to burn with it.

“You’ll really let me write my own story?” I ask. She nods, and I can already picture it. My brother’s best friend—a hot, dangerous guy I’m absolutely forbidden from dating. But then he saves me from a Lorenzo-type tool, swinging me on the back of his motorcycle before peeling away from the restaurant. A love affair we have to keep secret from my brother who will absolutely kill us both…

“I have a few ideas,” I say. “Get ready to start writing.”

Post Note: My next book, Savior Complex, comes out on July 19! This steamy romance is the 3rd book in the Sunset Bay series, and is a Small Town Forbidden Romance where three’s a crowd… Find out more and where to pre-order here.